Saitek Pro Flight Yoke System

I have long argued that an elaborate set of flight controls and other accessories isn’t necessary to make effective use of PC-based flight
simulations. Flying is mostly a head game, not an exercise of finely-honed motor skills.

But if you’re the type of pilot—virtual or otherwise—who can’t suspend disbelief and get into the game without at least a simulacrum of a
conventional yoke and engine controls, until recently you’ve had only one inexpensive choice, the CH Products
Flight Sim Yoke. (Companies like Precision Flight Controls make yokes that resemble real airplane hardware, but prices for those accessories start at real airplane part prices—around $500.)

Saitek released the Pro Flight line in mid-2007, and apparently
the accessories have proven popular. The units were on back order in
early November 2007. The devices compete directly with the CH Products
offerings (Amazon
advertises the yoke and throttlle for $120.49).

Saitek has often shown more design flair than other makers
of hardware, and the Pro Flight System components look sleek and
solid. They’re made (mostly) of plastic, but they come close to
re-creating that real airplane look and feel at about one-fifth the
cost of high-end accessories.

(In fact, the
Saitek Pro
Flight Yoke System and
Pro Flight
Throttle Quadrant incorporate many of the main features and
subtle touches that I specified for a flight yoke several years ago
at Microsoft. But the Sidewinder hardware team decided not to
proceed with the project, and Microsoft no longer makes joysticks
and similar hardware for PCs. The company now focuses on controllers
for the XBox.)

Pro Flight Yoke System Features

The Saitek yoke offers a typical set of basic features, plus some
extra touches not available from the competition. The core
functions include:

Elevator and aileron axes on yoke

POV “hat switch”

6 additional buttons for such functions as
elevator trim, operating the landing gear and
flaps, wheel brakes, and switching modes (you
can easily reassign these functions; see below)

An integrated
USB hub on the yoke body with three USB connectors (if you
connect USB devices that draw much power, you need to buy an AC
adapter that juices up the hub. The yoke, including the built-in
digital stopwatch, gets sufficient power from the USB connection
to the computer.)

A stainless steel (rather than plastic) shaft.

A clever quick-connect mount that attaches the yoke securely
to a wide range of desks and tables.

In short, most of the controls you need for essential flying tasks are
readily at hand.

Saitek Pro Flight Throttle
Quadrant

The companion Pro Flight Throttle Quadrant matches the throttle
nicely. It features three levers (by default, throttle, propeller
control, and mixture) and three rocker switches. All of the levers
include a detent at the bottom of the arc—useful for
thrust reversers, propeller beta range, etc.

You can assign custom functions to all of the levers and
controls. For example, if you fly a twin-engine jet, you can
reassign the propeller control to act as a second power lever and
convert the mixture lever into a flap or spoiler control.

The mounting bracket attaches vertically or horizontally,
which makes the unit easy to clamp to the edge of almost any flat surface.

Testing the Units

I’ve been trying the
Saitek Pro
Flight Yoke System and
Pro Flight
Throttle Quadrant with
Microsoft® Flight Simulator X
and Vista. I generally prefer to use a basic joystick for most
virtual flying (it’s easy to move out of the way when I finish a
practice session). But when I’m in the mood for an extended virtual
flight, I find myself attaching the the Pro Flight Yoke and
Throttle Quadrant to my keyboard shelf. The clamp mechanism is a
handy bit of industrial design. It overcomes one of my long-standing
objections to yokes and throttles—much of the time they’re too much
trouble to fuss with if you don’t have a computer and desk space
dedicated to virtual flying.

Flight Simulator recognized the yoke immediately, and with the Settings
command in Flight Simulator, I was able quickly to configure the
yoke buttons and throttle quadrant levers for the Baron BE58. (For
more information about customizing control settings in Flight
Simulator, see the
Learning Center.)

Control Feel

The Saitek devices compare favorably to the direct competition,
and even to much more expensive units. I recently test flew a $4500,
FAA-approved console at an aviation convention, and although the
yoke and other controls looked very much like the flight
controls in a typical light-airplane cockpit, the control response
didn’t feel much better than that delivered by the Saitek units,
especially in pitch.

That’s a common problem that even the metal shaft and bearings
that Saitek touts in its promotions can’t solve. It’s just not
feasible to deliver fluid, precise, and timely response with the
mechanical controls currently available—at least at prices most
consumers are likely to pay.

Of course, no ground-based training device can reproduce the full range of
feedback that pilots rely on when flying real airplanes in the real
air. That said, the Saitek yoke provides a serviceable control
“feel,” and after a few virtual flights, you’ll probably fine-tune
your inputs to hand-fly effectively, just as you adjust
to the differences in control responses among real airplanes.

Some of the people posting reviews of the Saitek system at
Amazon.com and on the
Saitek forums have reported a problem with random key-presses as
they use the Pro Flight Yoke System. These phantom inputs seem to
extend or retract the landing gear or make other changes to the
airplane configuration or views. My tests did not turn up any of
these issues, but Saitek seems to be handling complaints by
exchanging units. More information is available on the
Saitek
support Web page.

Configuration and Customization

To use the buttons and switches on the
Pro Flight Yoke
System and all the levers on
Pro Flight
Throttle Quadrant with Flight
Simulator, you must spend a few minutes changing
control assignments with the Settings command (see
Using a Joystick [.pdf] in the
Flight
Simulator Learning Center). This process is a straightforward select-and-click
operation that lets you specify which buttons control such functions as
nose-up and nose-down trim, operation of the landing gear and flaps, and
so forth.

To take full advantage of all toggle switches, buttons, and levers, you
can use the SST Programming software from
Saitek
(it’s on the CD-ROM that comes with the
Pro Flight Yoke
System) that provides additional options,
such as assigning sequences of keystrokes to buttons and using several
modes (selected with switches on the yoke and throttle quadrant) that effectively
multiply the number of controls available on the
units. You can set up several profiles to use the yoke and throttle
quadrant most effectively with different types of aircraft. Just
load the appropriate profile when you switch from, say, a Cessna 172
to the BE-58 Baron or to a Boeing 737

The documentation for the SST Programming utility is on the
CD-ROM. No real programming is involved—assigning functions to
levers and buttons is basically a point-and-click operation.